A collaborative effort by 122 United Church of Christ congregations, four associations, and more than 100 households in the Southern New England Conference has abolished $26.2 million in medical debt in two separate buys. Families in seven states and first responders around the country will soon be receiving letters telling them that their medical debt has been forgiven.

Newtown Congregational Church (NCC), a member of the United Church of Christ (UCC), was among the churches to participate in the recent effort.

In Fairfield County, more than $413,000 in debt has been abolished for 170 households.

At an October 25 news conference, local, regional and national UCC leaders announced that a conference-wide fundraising campaign in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, birthed before the pandemic, along with a contribution from a national ministry of the UCC, raised over $200,000.

The gifts were sent to the New York-based nonprofit RIP Medical Debt, which bought up debt for pennies on the dollar in August in 65 counties in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

That purchase wiped out $8.4 million in medical debt for 7,175 households, with the average forgiven debt being $1,171.

A second purchase funneled $107,000 of the church donations into a new fund. The Helping COVID Heroes Fund was created to respond to COVID-19 and has already eliminated another $17.8 million in debt for 12,144 first responders, health care workers including home health aides, pharmacists, social workers, hospital technicians, National Guard members, and others across the United States. Texas, Oklahoma, Michigan, and Georgia were the top four states represented, with average debt forgiven being $1,466.

A ‘Christian Ministry’

Reverend Matt Crebbin, the senior pastor of NCC, recalls a UCC conference in other parts of the country doing similar work. While the local UCC congregation put much of its fundraising on hold earlier this year due to the coronavirus and the uncertainly the pandemic brought to so many parts of everyday life, NCC nevertheless responded to the invitation to participate in the undertaking. He and others felt RIP Medical Debt was an important cause to adopt.

“We undertook this back in May, when the coronavirus crisis was still evolving,” he said. “At that time we weren’t committing to any fundraising, or any appeals, with finances still up in the air.

“NCC decided to contribute to this effort,” he continued, “because we knew how the costs of medical debt were already. We knew these things were about to skyrocket.”

RIP Medical Debt, he said, “intuitively makes sense to people, in terms of how to leverage resources.”

Reverend Kristen Provost Switzer, NCC’s minister of youth and mission, also remembers hearing about the effort about a year ago.

“The Southern New England Conference of UCC got the word out to all of the clergy in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, and asked for all clergy and congregations to consider being part of this initiative,” she said October 30.

It wasn’t long, she said, before leaders within NCC agreed that the project was a good one.

“I think we realized early on that liberating folks and eradicating medical debt is a form of restorative justice,” she added. “We realized that once medical debt is lifted, as folks are able to get out from under that, their life changes in a qualitative way.”

Instead of putting money toward that debt, Provost Switzer said, “they can put that money toward other things that will help them get a leg up on life, like education.”

The effort is very similar to GoFundMe and other crowdsourcing programs, where a large goal is reached through the efforts of many, often strangers. Donations from around the world, in all levels, can quickly add up to make a financial difference.

“Medical debt is one of the leading forms of bankruptcy in the United States,” Crebbin pointed out. “For the Christian church, it makes sense” to eradicate as much of this debt as possible.

“It combines the Christian ministry of being both physically healthy and economically healthy,” he added. “Having those disproportionate so often, people’s physical well being is tied into their economics.”

Being able to buy debt for pennies on the dollar made sense to Crebbin.

“I think people thought this was a good way to make a real difference in the lives of real people,” he said. “People should not have to go into debt to obtain health care.”

Collaborative Effort

Since its first buy in May, RIP’s Helping COVID Heroes Fund has already wiped out $46 million in debt for 36,662 people across the country working on the front lines of the pandemic. The UCC was one of the first ten organizations to contribute to this fund.

To date, $51.8 million in medical debt has been abolished by United Church of Christ.

The UCC’s medical debt project began with a 2019 buy in Chicago, where church donations abolished $5.3 million in debt for 5,888 families on the city’s South Side.

In January 2020, the effort moved to St Louis, where $12.9 million in medical debt was eliminated for 11,108 households in that city and St Louis County.

This summer, nine California congregations in the East Bay Area wiped out $7.4 million in medical debt for 3,539 households across the state.

Speaking at the news conference last month, UCC clergy representing congregations in the three states of the Southern New England Conference said the project hoped to reach low-income debtors throughout their communities. They were astounded and grateful for the wide reach of this buy.

The Rev Jocelyn Gardner Spencer, senior pastor of the United Church on the Green in New Haven, reminded attendees during the October news conference that Scripture calls for everyone “to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, to let the oppressed go free.

“In the midst of a pandemic that is disproportionately impacting communities of color, and with widespread unemployment causing people to lose their insurance just when they may need it most, eliminating medical debt for vulnerable individuals and families is a tangible way in which we are responding to our call to make God’s love and justice real,” she added.

The Rev Kent Siladi, former bridge Conference minister, who helped head the campaign, said he and others participated in the medical debt relief “because we are centered in ‘living the love and justice of Jesus.’

“When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we wondered if we should put the campaign on pause,” he continued. “The nudging of the Holy Spirit moved us to continue, and individuals and churches responded with glad and generous hearts. This is a demonstration of the power of collaboration and commitment to make an impact and a difference together.”

The campaign will continue through the summer of 2021, reaching low-income Americans in each of the UCC’s geographic regions. A fifth buy is in process, in Kansas and Oklahoma; a sixth, in the UCC’s Central Atlantic Conference, will cover the states of Maryland and Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

The UCC is also using it as an opportunity to draw attention to what the Rev Traci Blackmon, associate general minister, calls “the unconscionable cost and profiteering of health care in the United States and their devastating impact on families, as a critical issue as we vote in the 2020 elections.”

The Helping COVID Heroes Fund continues to receive and disburse donations. For information and/or to donate, visit ripmedicaldebt.org/campaign/covidheroes.

While the concerted effort by Newtown Congregational Church for RIP Medical Debt has slowed in recent months, Reverend Crebbin says he and others are still accepting donations earmarked for the special fund.

“Certainly if folks have a mission and an interest in eradicating more medical debt, and taking more medical debt out of New England, we will take those contributions and send them to the appropriate place,” he said.

Donations can be mailed to Newtown Congregational Church, 14 West Street, Newtown CT 06470, with RIP Medical Debt noted on the memo line of a check.